Bled Dust
by physixXx
Summary: OneShot! The war is ending... and look who's held captive? Dark!fic, multiple character deaths but no angst!


**1.**  
A scream woke him up.

He didn't know where he was. All he knew was that he was cold, slightly damp, badly injured, and hungry. All he could hear when he came to was a slight dripping of water somewhere in the corner. He realised, immediately thereafter, that he was chained to the wall behind him, in rusty shackles that cut into his wrists and forearms, yet would not yield to his desperate attempts to wrench himself free.

He wasn't scared.

But he certainly was mad as hell.

What was the last thing he remembered?

A fight.

A duel.

A killing curse. 

A flash of pain.

Darkness.

And then this infernal cold, sapping both magick and the will to use it.

He could already feel biting pain on the exposed skin. His teeth were chattering and he wondered how long it would be before he grew too cold to do even that.

Aside from the strip of light along the floor a few feet from him – obviously a door into a well-lit room, he mused – his prison was completely dark. He couldn't see his wounds, but he knew they were grave. He coughed and cringed at the burning sensation within his lungs... or is that 'lung'? His breathing was laboured, each attempt deeper – and just as futile – as the last. He coughed again and felt something thick fly from his mouth, landing on his leg. He tried to wipe it off – he had, after all, some dignity left – but the chains wouldn't allow him that luxury.

He had forgotten about the chains.

The door swung open, filling the room with a rush of light that burned his eyes. He hissed and looked away, squinting. Even his neck ached.

"Well, looks like someone has decided to grace us with his consciousness," said a voice.

He knew that voice.

"Potter!"

He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named tried desperately to stand and reach for his wand. It was instinct.

He had forgotten about the chains.

"Avada Kedavra!" he yelled anyway. "AVADA KEDAVRA AVADA KEDAVR—"

He felt a fist collide with his jaw once, twice, thrice until the unmistakable sound of bone snapping rung through the air.

"Lumos Oculum," Potter whispered. A ball of light formed in front of the half-blood and levitated a few inches in front of him.

"Learn a new trick, youngling?" You-Know-Who spat, along with blood and teeth. He could see his surroundings, now. The dungeon was moldy and dank, free-standing water spotted the floor and blood coated the walls like a bad abstract painting. There were chunks of meat everywhere – or was it bits of flesh? The Dark Lord looked cautiously at himself, just to make sure all of his extremities were intact. Potter was well-protected from the cold in a thick, winter parka.

Potter slowly took off his fur-lined gloves and smiled wickedly, a sneer that would have made Lucius Malfoy jealous.

"Oh, I've learned a great many things, Tom."

"Do _not_ call me that!" You-Know-Who spat, attempting to get on his feet and lunge at the boy.

He kept forgetting about the chains.

Potter's fist collided with his jaw again. It didn't hurt so much as sting this time, but the sound of teeth hitting the floor was painfully clear. The Dark Lord slumped against the wall, sitting back on his heels. Potter didn't even bother wiping the blood from his fist.

"Having a bit o' fun, Harry?" came another voice from the adjacent room. The Dark Lord watched as Potter's tall, redheaded blood-traitor friend sauntered into the room. "Ooh, he's awake."

"Oh, behold," the Dark Lord laughed, "a Weasley. Tell me, how is the family? Family reunions a little lighter, these days?"

Ronald Weasley, to his credit, laughed. His voice was raspy and strained. The Dark Lord remembered Lucius slicing his throat once. Apparently, he got better.

"As soon as Lucius finds me, you would pray for—"

Laughter erupted again, this time louder and more boisterous.

That's when he saw what the redheaded mongrel was holding.

Ron held up his hand, his fingers closed tightly around long, luxurious locks of platinum hair. And, attached to the hair, was the head of Lucius Malfoy, his eyes wide in shock and mouth gaped open. The cut wasn't clean; it was mangled and shredded, as if a rusty, dull saw had made it.

Blood still dripped from the opening in the neck.

Weasley tossed the head at the Dark Lord. It rolled onto his lap, eyes seemingly staring into his own – poetic.

"Very clever," Weasley began, his voice even raspier, as if he could only speak so many times before his throat would need to rest, "leaving a piece of you in Lucius."

The Dark Lord made to laugh again, knowing that Potter and the others had no idea just how clever he was.

**  
2.**

Hours passed – maybe days, he couldn't really tell anymore. The slit of light under the door was always on and no one ever came to feed him. He wondered about Bellatrix and McNair; wondered if they had suffered the same fate as poor Lucius, who was a bumbling fool at times, but was one of his favoured, even after the debacle of losing the prophecy. And what of his son, Draco? Where was he? He had been lost to his cause since Snape had had to kill Dumbledore for him.

Oh, how he wished he were there when it happened. His heart soared at the thought of it: Dumbledore strutting on Hogwarts grounds to find a small, but deadly, battalion of Death Eaters laying waste to his precious palace, and then Snape spitting out the Dark Lord's two most beloved words: 'Avada Kedavra'.  
He couldn't help himself.

Lord Voldemort tittered.

He noticed that he was no longer shaking with cold. But he knew that only meant that his body was too weak to shiver. His body was no longer even trying to keep warm.

He was almost asleep when the heavy door swung open again.

He heard the clatter of metal hitting stone. His eyes focused on the object in front of him.

Helga Hufflepuff's chalice.

As the rattling echo died down, he could hear the laughter in next room fade out as the door closed again.

They were laughing at him.

They were laughing at the greatest wizard of all time.

**3.**  
Voldemort felt pain shoot through the back of his head.

When the spots cleared from his eyes and they were able to focus, he saw Potter once more standing over him.

"I think you hurt him," said a softer – but no less sarcastic – voice from behind his most hated enemy. A bushy-haired girl stood beside Potter. She placed her hand on his shoulder and smiled, just as cruelly as Potter had earlier. 

"Oh, I plan to do more than hurt him," Potter said. There was a coldness in his voice, now... and an empty blackness in those emerald eyes.

"I knew I should have killed you, first, Mudblood," Voldemort said, his voice now a crackled shadow of its former glory. His throat was tight and dry; it hurt to speak. But he would never let Potter see that weakness.

"Oh, yes," she agreed, "that you most certainly should have."

She held out a locket in front of her; it dangled and spun on its chain, "Recognise this?"

And he did.

She knelt dangerously close in front of him. Any other time, Voldemort would have lunged at her. He knew he wouldn't be able to do anything really, but he would have at least tried to scare her. 'Maybe next time,' he thought, 'when I'm not so tired.'

"I'd like to read something to you," she said, pulling a small piece of parchment from her pocket and unfolding it. "'To the Dark Lord...' " she read, "... 'I know I will be dead long before you read this but I want you to know that it was I who discovered your secret. I have stolen the real Horcrux and intend to destroy it as soon as I can. I face death in the hope that when you meet your match you will be mortal once more'."

She smiled as she read the letters: R.A.B.

"Regulus," Voldemort whispered.

Granger gently folded the parchment and placed it back in her pocket. She wore an insufferably smug look as she glanced back at Harry, now standing by the doorway to the adjacent room.

"Well," she laughed, "I suppose you did 'meet your match', as it were."

Voldemort's head lolled to the side, his eyes began to glaze over. He sniggered slightly as he whispered, "Oh, yes. I met my match, indeed, and soon, you'll know just how much my match he is."

Granger's smile faded, but she said nothing; her eyes said it all. She stood, taking one last look down at the broken man in front of her before turning on her heel and walking out the door.

As the room faded to black once again, and sleep (or some semblance thereof) began to overtake Lord Voldemort, he heard Potter ask, 'what did he say?' followed by her curt response: 'Nothing important.'

**4.**  
When next he awoke, the room was already lit, the orb floating high above him. No one was there with him. He looked at his wrists. The chains had long-since begun to cut into his skin as the weight of his limpness pulled down on the unrelenting bonds. He couldn't feel any pain, however, but his wounds were angry with gangrene.

Before he passed out again, he saw pieces of meat in front of him, just beyond his reach.

He instantly recognised the green, scaly husk.

Nagini was dead.

**5.**  
Next, Tom Riddle woke up laughing.

He didn't know why.

The room was lit, again.

He heard voices, some he recognised and others he didn't.

"Why's he laughing?"

"Because he's mental."

"No," said Potter, "he knows it's over."

"Over?" Tom Riddle muttered. "It's far from over. I made sure of _that _the night I killed your parents. _You _were to be _my _undoing, brat?" He laughed. "Oh, no, you will be my legacy."

Riddle's eyes opened wider as they focused. He stood on his knees in an attempt to reclaim some sense of illustrious grandeur.

"Go ahead, Potter," he commanded, "and do your worst. I will return again... even if not in _this_ vessel." Riddle almost managed to sound triumphant and look defiant.

This time it was Potter who laughed.

"You're pathetic, Riddle," he leered as he made to step in front of Riddle's weak body. "Do you think I don't know? Do you think you have been clever? Do you think that I haven't seen what you were trying to do since I was fourteen years old?"

Potter knelt down in front of him, grabbed his chin, and forced their eyes to meet. It made Tom shudder in its finality.

Potter brushed his lightning-shaped scar – curse that scar! – with a finger from his free hand and said, in a low, feral growl, "Do you think I didn't know what this was?"

From behind Potter, the bushy-haired girl – the clever girl – announced, "Tom Marvolo Riddle, I'd like to introduce to you..."

Potter stood and everyone turned to face the door.

"... the last remaining Dementor in all of this world and the next."

Weasley ushered in a ragged excuse for a beast; its dark cloak tattered and torn, its normally fierce hooded eyes a pale synonym of its former glory. He had it bound in bands of mystic energy, its hands behind its back with another band connecting the arms with the legs. Ron held it aloft at the point where the leg and arm trusses met, torturing the beast with its own weight.

It howled as they walked.

Riddle found that he could feel the cold again and couldn't bear the scream.

Weasley threw the ragged Dementor to the floor on its stomach. Granger stepped over it and straddled its back. She grabbed it with one hand under its 'chin' as her other hand clutched the top of its hood and forced its head up. It howled again as bones – or, at least, what must constitute as bones for a Dementor – snapped.

"... mercy ..." Riddle found himself whispering in spite of himself, too disgusted to watch, yet too weak to turn away.

Potter walked over to the beast, his wand drawn. He whispered an incantation. The light in the room dimmed, as if the very dark nature of the spell cast away all light – and hope. He plunged his wand deep in the open, howling mouth of the Dementor. It lurched and kicked and tried to get away, but the mystic bands tightened, as did the Mudblood's grip. Riddle heard the hiss of flesh sizzling, as if being branded by a scorching iron or cooked over a hot stove.

When Potter pulled the wand free, the Dementor fell, limp and still, out of the girl's grip.

"... mercy ..."

Potter turned to face Riddle again.

"Oh, no, Riddle," he said, his eyes turning to green slits. "Apparently there's been a failure to communicate here. You made sure that I had no mercy left to give."

Potter held the tip of the wand to his scar and slowly pulled back, much like extracting a memory out of one's mind to be placed in a Pensieve. A thick, mucous-like substance was drawn from the scar, clinging to the tip of the wand. It was a putrid green.

Riddle screamed, as though the very soul of him were being ripped from his body.

He saw Potter flick his wand, placing the substance in a vial and handing it to Granger. She held it out to him and laughed in triumph as Potter pointed his wand at it and it exploded.

Riddle heard a howl. 

He realised, only seconds later that it came from his own lips.

Weasley handed Potter a blade.

Riddle's breath hitched when Potter turned to face him. Potter's slit-eyes and flat nose and hollowed cheeks radiated with anger, white hot and all-consuming. There was no pity in those eyes, now – no grace or mercy. There was no love left in the heart of this new beast.

With a flick of the wrist, the blade slit Riddle's throat.

He bled dust.

And Potter cackled.


End file.
